Posted
by
Zonk
on Sunday July 16, 2006 @02:37PM
from the ignore-the-leak dept.

Reuters is reporting that the shuttle has been prepping for a return to Earth, stowing gear and checking systems. Their expected return is tomorrow morning, around 9am EDT. From the article: "During tests on Sunday a leaking power unit for the shuttle flight control system appeared to be in good enough shape for landing and the jets that steer the spacecraft worked fine, NASA engineers said. The shuttle crew was still awaiting word on whether Discovery's heat shield had passed a final inspection performed on Saturday, but scans conducted with cameras and sensors throughout the flight had so far turned up no damage."

We were friends with Rick Husband, who as you know was the captin of the ill-fated Columbia. However, I would still be willing to go into space on the shuttle. There's a risk, sure, but there's more of a risk driving to the airport and flying to Florida than there is going up on the shuttle.It follows along the lines of the fact that if you lost someone you were firends with in a car accident, would you get into a car again? The answer is yes, as the risk is minimal enough to not worry you every time you dr

But you'd think about the risk more. And it might be different if it was a motorcycle.But.. um.. could you describe the mechanism by which you came to the conclusion that it's safer than the airline flight and drive?

'cause it seems to me that if these guys [planecrashinfo.com] are right about the "per trip" statistics, and you figure drive, flight, drive, your odds of being in a fatal accident on the way to the pad are something like, 3.8 million to one against, whereas the odds of being in a fatal trip to space and back have

going on that data the risk per mission sounds quite high to me. certainly worse than driving to the airport and taking a flight.

now the risk per mile is very low but thats mainly a result of the insane number of miles done in the relatively safe LEO environment, its launches and landings that are dangerous (for any spaceship not just the shuttle).

You think they spent 12 days in space just looking at the thermal tiles? I know the main reason for the mission was to transfer supplies and a man to the ISS. Probably lots of other experiments as well. Unfortunately the news doesn't report on the mundane, just the dramatic, so you only hear about the possible problems with the tiles.

Isn't that what the media does for everything now-a-days anyways? I mean look at the whole middle east ordeal. All you hear is death, death, and more death, then a bombing sprinkled in. I know a lot of bad things happen over there, but I'm sure there's other things they can talk about that relate to the topic. I mean I'm all for remembering our fallen for the cause, but like I said, there's more things to discuss.
A lot of it has to deal with shock factor now.

Isn't that what the media does for everything now-a-days anyways? I mean look at the whole middle east ordeal. All you hear is death, death, and more death, then a bombing sprinkled in. I know a lot of bad things happen over there, but I'm sure there's other things they can talk about that relate to the topic. I mean I'm all for remembering our fallen for the cause, but like I said, there's more things to discuss. A lot of it has to deal with shock factor now.

Yes, that's the impression you get from the news coverage, but there are many goals of the mission you could read about on the Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org]. I've linked to a specific revision so you won't have to worry about coming across a vandalized version.

I'll save you the trouble of clicking on it. Equipment delivered to the ISS:

1 new astronaut on board the ISS, Thomas Reitner from the European Space Agency, to stay with the current crew for six months.

80 C Freezer: This freezer is known as the Minus Eighty Degree Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI). The French-built unit comprises four independent drawers which can be set to operate at different temperatures (image). Initially, temperatures of 80 C, 26 C, and +4 C will be used during on-orbit ISS operations. Both reagents and samples will be stored in the freezer. As well as storage, the freezer is designed to be used to transport samples to and from the ISS in a temperature controlled environment. The total capacity of the unit is 300 liters.

The European Modular Cultivation System (EMCS) for biological experiments. This consists of a gas tight incubator in which there are two centrifuges, each able to carry four experimental cartridges. Two "Ground controls"--exact copies of the equipment and experiments--will be run on the ground. One will be in Europe and one at NASA's Ames Research Center.

New oxygen generation system. This device is considered a test for an equipment design with potential for use on postulated future long durations to the Moon and Mars. The system will initially run below its maximum capacity, though it is designed for enabling the ISS to support a crew of six in the future. It will supplement the Russian-built Elektron system operating in the Zvezda module.

New cycling machine for the ISS crew. A Danish built device, the Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation System (CEVIS). (They have to exercise or else they'll dramatically lose bone mass due to lack of gravity, of course.)

Replacement common cabin air assembly heat exchanger used to control the internal air temperature of the ISS.

All of the above equipment is to be installed in the Destiny Laboratory Module. Additionally the orbiter and ISS computer printers will be swapped.

Lets not forget, they fixed everything necessary to support the next two missions which each will add a 16 ton truss to the structure and new solar arrays which will give enough electricity to power the next science module that will be added.
And, most importantly, the new tank foam changes have proven to work out well.

If most of the mission is making sure that the shuttle they sent up can land safely (at least that's the impression we get from the news coverage)

That's the problem...what the media focuses on and what the purpose of most of the mission is are entirely different things. Sure, many of the goals (and indeed, the highest priority goals) of this particular flight is to help establish on orbit inspection and repair techniques, but there are a lot of other things.

In particular, within NASA I think the most significant part of this mission (besides the tank repairs and the on orbit inspection techniques) is the return of ISS to a three person crew. Even more significant, that third crew member is an European Space Agency astronaut and the orbiter dropped off a major European payload rack (MELFI, which is a giant low temperature freezer).

Unfortunately, that really doesn't come up in the coverage, it's very much geared towards "so, what happened today that could have killed the crew". The spin of "constant danger" the press puts on the mission is what gets people to watch, not the fact that we just dropped off a German guy on the Space Station. The press conferences and coverage are dominated by what is almost excruciatingly detailed discussions of what are in reality very minor problems. It's what gets people to watch.

SpaceFlightNow has a detailed timeline [spaceflightnow.com] of the re-entry - not sure if it will still be dark enough to capture a glow across the Western US with the 9:14AM EDT first landing time... but my guess is a LOT more camera's will be watching it come back into the atmosphere.

If you look at the maps [spaceflightnow.com] you'll see they're not passing over the western US this time. Here's wishing them the best, even if not may people can see what's happening until the final stages.

Of course I'll be glad to hear here what they -actually- do besides the routine of flying the shuttle and assuring safe return, but even more I'll be glad to hear why no media write about it.

Because shuttle flight is pretty mundane when it comes down to it. Not to take away the technical hurdles of every flight. I'm a bit more optimistic then others. Only because NASA has been so succesful in making shuttle launches seem so mundane do we all flip out when a disaster occurs and start questioning NASA's capab

Now did/will the shuttle do anything beyond that? Any delivery? Any research? Any discoveries? Anything more than launch, orbit, landing?

They also delivered supplies and performed vital repairs on the ISS. Also they dropped off a third crewman, who will spend the next few months on the station, and tested out a new extension to the shuttle's robot arm, which should make it easier to perform repairs to the underside of the shuttle.

I, for one, applaud anyone with the bravery and skill to be a part of the space program. Also, it makes me sad that we never hear about any of the good progress anymore. All we hear is tile this, re-entry that. How about a news story about some of the unique experiments and projects have happened in space, or the international cooperation that goes into building the space station? It's also amazing how the media plays off images from Mars as a trip to the park. Shame on people. This stuff is paving way for the future. When we do screw up this planet for good, there's only one way to go and that's up. I guess since it's not all shiney lights and space babes like Star Trek, no one seems to care.

For the coming years, I would not get your hopes up too high. Besides, if we even cannot keep a very friendly habitat like earth occupied, what would happen in space? If we even manage to mess up down here, we're history. And it sure looks like we're managing to screw things up for certain.

Did you read? I said use the Soyuz to ferry the PEOPLE up and use the shuttle as an unmanned truck.
Until the USA goes back to the ELV's like the Russians do, I'd keep people off the shuttles. lates 60's technology, built in the 70's, not flown until the 80's. Old, out of date. I'm surprised it works as well as it does. Hats off to the NASA guys (the blue collar, not white collar) that keep it flying as well as it does.
Go fever......gets you in trouble every time.

From a recent interview with NASA Discovery team maintenance staff member:"Yep, them there space trucker fellers been flyin' Ol' Betty since way back when, yessir. Now she may not have all them new silly-cone chips or them there onboard DVD players folks always talkin' 'bout, but you take her for a spin, I dare say she'll surprise you. Got some bite under the bonnet yet, that's what ol' Mark Kelly said when he first flew her. Jerry Morgan, he chimes in, he says, 'Yep, that's from when we picked up them snak

It is not at this time believed that the shuttle can be landed without a human pilot for the simple reason that the autopilot is not good enough to land on a runway.

Well, that's just wrong.

This mission is actually the first where the shuttle can be landed remotely, as reported here [space.com]. Basically a cable was built that allows the ground to actuate some functions that orginally the crew had to do switch throws for.

What is interesting about the cable is that (if I recall correctly) it only cost a couple hundred

The shuttle can land itself without any hassle whatsoever. What prevents this from being done is the fact that the landing gear is manually activated. This was an intentional design element, as once the landing gear is activated there is no way to reverse the process. The fear was that if the computers fouled up and dropped the landing gear early, the excess drag would cause the shuttle to fall short of the runway. For this reason, they wait until the last minute (approx. 300 feet) to activate the system. As far as I know, the landing gear still requires an actual human to give the command, but the cable they installed allows this to be done remotely if the need should arise.

Nice to know that they want all of us to realize what the shuttle is doing every step of its journey like something bad is going to happen. I mean really, the anticipation is just nuts..."This just in, shuttle is to do a barral roll in space for up comming landing... Now watch as the shuttle goes through the atmosphere, drama unfolds in the cockpit as the astronauts try to reassure NASA that everything is okay... Now lets play the landing in slow motion so as to gather info on a leaky brake... Now we will p

One of the mission goals was to set up a -80 C freezer on the ISS. We have a couple in our lab (most bio labs do) -- they're primarily used to store biological samples. The -20 C freezer and 4 C refridgerater are also standard operating equipment in biology (or chemistry, I suppose), so it looks like they're gearing up to do some life sciences work.

Now, this brings up an interesting issue -- How do you operate refrigeration equipment in space? Especially that -80 C...it's a real power hog and probably outputs a lot of heat (in a closed air environment, is this a problem?). Does anyone know how cooling is done in space? Is it still based on condenser coils? Can they somehow utilize the "cold" of space for this purpose?

You apply the heat to a black object exposed to space, and it radiates heat away -- unlike the "radiator" in your car, which actually dumps most of its heat by conduction to the surrounding air.

A space radiator is very effective: it can get things extremely cold just by circulating the fluid without any active refrigeration (i.e, no compressor, no phase changes). The only hitch is that you have to keep sunlight off it, by a combination of sunshades and spacecraft attitude control.

We tend to lose sight of how effective radiation is here on Earth where we have air redistributing heat, but the moon is a good example: its surface temp is about 110C on the dayside and -180C on the nightside.

The payload racks in the US segment laboratory are water cooled, there are two internal water cooling loops in the laboratory that circulate through the racks. The internal water system dumps heat through a heat exchanger to an external ammonia loop, which gets rid of the heat through the radiators you can see deployed as some of the external ISS appendages. Basically, they are the big white panels that aren't solar arrays.